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Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, long-time rivals known for occasionally engaging in competitive trash-talking, held a joint conference call Thursday to talk up the alliance the two companies disclosed earlier this week.

"Oracle, and I want to thank Larry as well, has always been there when we needed them," Benioff said at one point during the call, noting that Salesforce.com's operations run on the Oracle database. "There's no company I'd rather partner with to be the heart of our database infrastructure than Oracle," he said.

"Larry, the Oracle database has been a key part of Salesforce's infrastructure from the very beginning of our company 14 years ago. It was absolutely the best decision we ever made, to go with Oracle," Benioff said.

Ellison was equally generous with his praise. "Salesforce has always been an important customer for Oracle," he said. "Salesforce is the world's largest cloud company," he added at one point, overlooking his Oracle OpenWorld 2010 opening keynote when he famously declared that Salesforce was not a cloud computing company.

Tuesday the two companies announced a partnership under which Salesforce will standardize its operations on Oracle's database software, Linux operating system, Java middleware and Exadata Database Machine servers. The two software giants will integrate Salesforce's CRM and other cloud applications with Oracle's Fusion HCM (human capital management) and Financial Cloud software-as-a-service applications, and Salesforce will adopt those Oracle applications to run its own business.

"Our two companies are going to work together to jointly develop out-of-the-box integration between Salesforce's market-leading CRM application and Oracle's cloud applications," Ellison said. Oracle offers its own on-premise and cloud CRM applications, the latter of which competes with Salesforce.

XChange Solution Provider 2015 is finally upon us and the timing couldn't be better. The premier channel event is happening March 1-3 in Dallas, bringing together 225 solution provider decision makers from across North America. CRN is at the event to provide news, analysis and a firsthand take from partners.